


Unfinished Business

by elynne



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Far Watch Post, Gen, Northern Barrens, Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-16 22:52:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15447606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elynne/pseuds/elynne
Summary: The Wolfmane Tribe is leaving for Pandaria in a few days, and Khydann needs to follow the final hint given months ago in her spirit journey before she leaves.





	Unfinished Business

Heat made the air shimmer above dry yellow grasses in the long Barrens midday sun. Khydann followed a dusty road, running almost straight north from Far Watch Post, where she'd left her belongings packed on the riding kodo she'd borrowed in Mulgore, to be fed, watered, and rested while she made this personal detour on her journey to meet the rest of the Wolfmane tribe in Ratchet. Tsaarak paced sedately alongside, head darting as she kept an alert eye on the surroundings, but aside from a few tallstriders that seemed content to ignore the pair, all was still.

"The great tree north of Far Watch Post," the tauren murmured under her breath. Coming up on the left side of the road was surely the landmark spoken of in her spirit journey--a tree wider across than a kodo from nose to tail, a paradise of shade spreading across the ocean of dusty grass. The bushes underneath were lusher and greener than the surrounding scrub, and Khydann approached cautiously, scouting for lurking cats or dozing raptors that might be hiding in the dim greenery, but after completing a circuit of the trunk they had found nothing. She stopped, staring at the tree, wondering what on Azeroth she was supposed to be doing here.

"It took ye long enough to get here, lass."

Khydann jumped and spun around, rifle already in her hands. She didn't understand Dwarvish, but she recognized that accent--and she realized she had understood what the voice had said, despite also somehow knowing that it was in Dwarvish. Tsaarak cocked her head, giving a curious raptor chirp without any hint of alarm.

The voice chuckled. "Down here, lass," it said. Khydann looked back at the tree, down near the base of the trunk, to a clump of roots that stuck up slightly from the Barrens ground. Seated on the root clump was the transparent shape of a dwarf.

"Are you..." she asked hesitantly.

"Oh, aye, I'm the fellah ye remember. The one what left yeh that first rifle." The dwarf smiled genially at her. His luxurious braided beard was streaked with grey, and it wavered slightly as he searched a translucent pouch at his side before bringing out a stout pipe. He began packing it as he continued. "And aye, it were a gift, not a theft. I was curious to see what ye would make of it. I heard from ol' Dorian Stoutfist a few years later that he taught yeh how to repack bullets, and forge new casings. He said ye was a fast learner, a better student than his last apprentice in fact, and yeh brought him some fantastic cider in trade. He talked about the cider a lot, actually." The ghostly dwarf chuckled, then sucked a deep draft from his pipe. The smoke that came out was even more wispily transparent than the rest of him, but Khydann's nostrils twitched at a very faint scent of tobacco.

"You are not my ancestor," Khydann said thoughtfully, watching the ghost of the pipe smoke trailing up and dissipating into the shadows overhead as the dwarf let out a quick bark of laughter. "But you were able to send a message to me when I was on my spirit journey. Are you--were you a shaman?"

Still laughing, the dwarf shook his head. "Nay, lass, I was just a tracker, like y'self. But I have a mite of unfinished business that needs attendin' to, and the spirits of yer ancestors was kind enough to do me a favor. As for that unfinished business... I hope ye brought a shovel." The dwarf kicked at a lump of earth near the root tangle. 

Khydann suppressed a snort of exasperation, glancing over her shoulder to where the activity of Far Watch Post could just be made out in the distance. "You could have mentioned that in your message," she said, shaking her mane in mild frustration. "Wait here, and I'll go fetch--"

"Nay, lass," the dwarf interrupted her. "I'm no shaman, but I've had time to make the acquaintance of some of the smaller earth spirits. Hold on a minute..." The pipe vanished from his hand as he closed his eyes, his mouth moving in words that Khydann couldn't hear at all. She stepped back as a small tremor shook the ground nearly beneath her hooves. Cracks appeared in the hard-baked earth, and a little ridge of soil abruptly broke up, like a tiny wave cresting among the roots. "There, that should do it," the dwarf said aloud with satisfaction. "Can't bring it all the way up for yeh, but the ground should be broken deep enough for ye to scoop it out."

Squatting down, Khydann began pulling up chunks of earth, whispering quiet thanks to the earth spirits as she worked under the dwarf's spectral gaze. In a few minutes her questing finger scraped along the edge of something metallic, and her ears perked in curious surprise. Soon she was able to drag the mysterious object out of the ground--a long, flat, sturdy, iron-bound hardwood chest. It was latched, but not locked. She glanced up at the dwarf. "Should I... open this?"

"Oh, aye," the dwarf said, looking pleased. "It's a gift for yeh, after all--and a favor I'm askin' of yeh, as well."

She quickly unlatched the chest and was able to push the lid open without much difficulty. A whiff of a familiar odor came up to her nostrils as she looked at the oilcloth swaddling something inside. Her hands were shaking slightly as she unfolded the cloth and gasped. "Is this..." Her fingers trailed down the long dark barrel and over the beautifully carved wooden stock. 

"Aye indeed," the dwarf said proudly as Khydann reverently lifted the rifle out of the box. "One of Merida Thundershot's finest run, a Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, one of the first score made. Her signature and the production number are engraved behind the clip mounting. Over a hunnerd and fifty years old--sixty now, I suppose... or seventy? Nearly two hunnerd years old, never a single jam or misfire. That beauty saved my life a score of times, or more."

"It's beautiful," Khydann breathed, gently running her hands along the length of the weapon and checking the fittings. "And in beautiful condition! It needs a cleaning, but... this is for me?" she said, looking up at the dwarf with her eyes wide.

"I dun't have an heir to pass her down to, and she deserves better than to rust to pieces in the ground," the dwarf replied, nodding solemnly. "Treat her with care and respect, lass. I've watched yeh for a while... I know you'll use her well."

"I will," Khydann promised, blinking wetness away from the corners of her eyes. "Thank you."

"And now, we come to the favor I'm askin' of yeh," the dwarf added, pointing down into the box again. The chest was obviously made to carry the gun, matching its dimensions snugly, and a few tatters of leather showed where it had once had straps for carrying. But tucked into a corner of the chest was another piece of cloth, a scrap of bright blue hidden under the dull brown oilcloth. Carefully putting the gun back into the chest, Khydann teased out the bit of silk. Something dropped out of it, but she was able to catch the object before it hit the ground. It was a bronze pendant with no chain attached, a brooch engraved with a trio of crossed hammers on one side, and an anvil being hit by a bolt of lightning on the other. Several small emeralds were embedded in the decorative border, and Dwarven runes wound across and around the entire thing. 

"That's the crest of my clan," the dwarf said, nodding at the amulet. "M'name's Gurden Anvilstrike, and I'm almost the last of my line. I never had kids of my own, but my sister... married a Dark Iron, against the will of our father, and moved off to join his dark clan just before the War of Three Hammers. I never heard from her again. I know--somehow, I guess it's just somethin' spirits can find out--that my sister and her husband are both dead. But they had a daughter. The last of our line." 

Khydann's ears twitched as she stared at the dwarf. "You want me to find her, and give her this? You do know... I don't speak Dwarven, and she's likely to shoot me on sight."

"Oh, it's even better than that," Gurden said with a half-smile. "I know she's alive, but I don't know her name. Don't even know the name of the clan she was born into. She might recognize the name Anvilstrike, or she might not, I've no clue. And I've no clue where she might be, neither. All I know is that she's alive, this belongs to her..." The ghost's voice deepened and shifted, the words embedding themselves in Khydann's mind in blue-white fire. "And you will deliver it into her hand. It will lead you to her. It will know her. You will do this for me." Khydann's vision darkened, and for a moment the face of the dwarf's ghost flared into a different shape, a young dwarf woman. Although she'd never been good at differentiating between flat humanoid faces, she knew that she would recognize this person, even if a hundred years were to pass. The words and the face burned in her mind's eye for a moment, then dissolved, leaving her blinking in the bright afternoon Barrens sunlight.

"I'm sorry to do that to yeh," the shade of Gurden said apologetically. "I didn't mean to--it's a ghost thing, I suppose. But now... I can rest." He sighed heavily, leaning back and making himself comfortable on the tangle of roots. "And when ye find her... she'll have a gift for yeh, too. I told her, in a dream... the name of yer family... yer tribe." Khydann opened her mouth to reply, but the ghost was already fading, smiling peacefully as his form billowed away in a faint breeze blowing across the grassland. "Give her the name of her family... and she'll give back yers in return. Good hunting to yeh..." The last words trailed off to an echo in her mind, leaving her with her gift, and her burden, sitting in shock under the spreading branches of the great tree north of Far Watch Post.


End file.
